Monday, December 13, 2010

Will Remembers Well

If you want a succinct record of the facts that lead to the 2000 election fiasco, please see George Will's recollection. (When I read it, I started boiling all over again.)

Will ends his piece with this paragraph:

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law. But this difficult case seems to have made little discernible law. That is good because it means no comparable electoral crisis has occurred. What the Supreme Court majority said on Dec. 12, 2000 - "our consideration is limited to the present circumstances" - has proved true. And may remain true, at least until the next time possession of the presidency turns on less than one ten-thousandth of a state's vote.

I think his last sentence needs elaboration. What happened in 2000 was not simply the result of a very close election. It was also, and mostly, the product of very bad faith on the part of the Democrats.